


Narcan and Adrenaline

by finefeatheredfriend



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Backstory, Fluff, Overdose, Rescue, Wholesome, bliss, hurt/comfortish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 17:47:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19773310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finefeatheredfriend/pseuds/finefeatheredfriend
Summary: Long ago Sheriff Whitehorse saved Tracey Lader from an overdose. Now it's her chance to return the favor.





	Narcan and Adrenaline

**Author's Note:**

> I’m thinking about writing an Earl and Tracey POV about Earl training the Cougars to protect themselves before Rook shows up. Haven’t decided if I’m actually going to, but I wrote this fluffy little short about him saving Tracey and her returning the favor.

Through a haze of simultaneous euphoria and pain, Earl heard voices arguing.

“I’m telling you I don’t have a heart monitor! Even if I did, it would be at my clinic, which we are not at. The best I’ve got is this,” a soft male voice said emphatically.

“He’s had a heart attack before, Doc. A stethoscope is not going to cut it,” came a familiar female voice.

“I know, I read the paper too, Tracey. I know who Sheriff Whitehorse is and I heard about his heart attack but this really is the best I can do. I’m sorry.” Earl felt a cold touch on his chest, heard the room go quiet as the man listened to his heart. He wondered absently where his shirt was as he felt cool air flutter lightly over his skin and rustle through his chest hair. “I don’t hear a murmur, but his heartrate is way too fast.”

Tracey looked over at Earl where he was shaking on the cot, his arms curled over his belly awkwardly. He was pale, too pale. His hat sat next to him on the side table, a lacing of sweat stains around the crown. Gently, she put her hand over one of his. It was hot to the touch. Earl had oscillated almost hourly between feverish and ice cold. He shuddered in his sleep, muttering something and twitching, making little distressed sounds.

“It’s alright, Sheriff,” she told him softly, wiping a rag across the crown of his head and his sweaty forehead. He looked pallid. His cheeks were sunken in and he looked a little thinner than normal, probably hadn’t eaten since he had been taken by the cult a week ago. His forehead creased and his face flickered a dozen expressions, variations on terror, guilt, panic, anger, agony.

“Rook, no, run….Pratt, no, no!…..Please don’t take them. Rook, run….Save yourself…..”

“Oh Whitehorse,” Tracey murmured sadly. Staying next to him as he struggling through the effects of the cult’s drug, she watched him struggle to breath, watched him shiver and shudder and shake. It was disturbing and heart-wrenching to watch. She put two fingers to his jugular, felt his pulse again as his head lolled to the side. His heart was still racing wildly. Dr. Lindsey walked up with his Merck manual open in one hand, the other rubbing at his forehead worriedly.

“It looks like a dose of adrenaline might help if it is scopolamine they’re concentrating from the Angel’s Trumpet flowers. It could be another belladonna-derived alkaloid, though, I really don’t know.”

“Adrenaline? Really? In an older man with history of heart issues?” Tracey objected lowly. Lindsey’s shoulders dropped and he puffed out a frustrated breath.

“We’re running out of options,” he said softly, putting a hand on Tracey’s shoulder. “I don’t know if there’s anything we can do for him other than wait or try the adrenaline.”

“He saved my life once, you know? I had OD-ed…again. He found me in a ditch. I was half-dressed, lying in the snow dying.” Tracey laughed bitterly. “He pulled up in his patrol car and I thought I was done. I thought he hated me. He had arrested me so many times for possession. I even bit him one time.” She ran a finger over a white crescent-shaped scar on Earl’s lower arm. “All he had to do was stand there and wait and I would have been dead, just another young black kid that the system didn’t care about. He could have let me die and no one would have questioned it. Instead, he took off his own coat and picked me up. He put me in the back of his patrol car like I weighed nothing and gave me Narcan. He sat next to me while I struggled to breathe, while my heart raced and I thought I was gonna die and he held my hand while we waited for paramedics to get there. He talked to me like I was his own kid, told me I’d be alright.” Tracey’s eyes went distant and she got an odd smile on her face as she squeezed Earl’s hand fondly. “He was shivering in the cold without his jacket, but it’s like he didn’t even notice. He never looked away when I told him I was scared, when I told him that I would never shoot up again. He believed me. He believed _in_ me. That night…the way he treated me, like I mattered, like I was someone, it changed me. Made me get clean.” She turned chocolate brown eyes on Lindsey. “We have to help him.”

“Then we have to try the adrenaline.”

Earl felt the blind euphoria drop away suddenly and he cried out, struggling against dark figures hovering over him. He lashed out in fear and anger as arms held him down.

“Now, calm down, Earl, you’re alright,” came the Mayor’s voice. “Gosh, he’s strong.”

“Ya think?” Tracey snapped as Earl shoved her backwards wildly. She stepped back toward the sheriff and framed his face with her hands gently but firmly, forced his wild, bloodshot eyes to meet her own. “Sheriff, listen to me, we are trying to help you, but you have to be still. Come on,” she said softly. “It’s alright now. Hand me the syringe.”

Earl felt the piercing sting of a needle entering his chest and suddenly felt his heart thundering in his ribcage like a wild animal fighting to escape. He gasped for breath and his back arched upwards, throwing Tracey off as he screamed in pain and terror.

“Get off me! Get off me you son-of-a-bitch! Where are my deputies? Where is the marshal?”

“Calm down, Sheriff, you have to calm down. Get the fucking IV in, Lindsey.”

“It’s not exactly like hitting a vein on a cow, dammit, hold him still.” There was a sharp pain in Earl’s arm and then cold running into him like an icy hand. He shivered, his lower jaw trembling violently as he shook, teeth rattling together. “His heartrate’s high, but it’s manageable. He should sleep in a minute.”

Earl fought unconsciousness madly, feeling grasping hands at his legs, feeling himself drug across the helicopter, feeling the butt of a rifle driven into his side as he grasped the frame desperately, trying to keep the cult from taking him. He feels zip ties around his wrists, feels a mask forced roughly over his face, smells sickly sweet vanilla and gardenia and a chemical haze overwhelming him. He sees Rook staring at him in panic, sees her reaching for him…and then thinks no more.

“I think he’s waking up,” came Tracey’s voice. Earl struggled back to the surface of consciousness slowly, hesitantly. Everything hurt. The lingering pangs of euphoria were disorienting and somehow deeply unpleasant. He felt his stomach roil and realized that he was hungry. Ravenous, even. His heart had slowed and as he peeked open an eye the room only spun a bit. His throat was dry, burning. He could taste a chemical, sickly sweet flavor on his tongue. He smacked his lips weakly, swallowing with a nasty click. His eyes were sticky at their edges and his vision was bleary, warped. “Hey,” Tracey greeted him softly. “You made it.”

“I could really go for a burger right about now,” Earl mumbled wearily, trying to sit up. He gazed at Tracey Lader for a moment before he lurched up and to the side and dry-heaved violently, his abdomen aching. Panting, he wiped his mouth and flopped back onto the pillow. “What happened? Where are my deputies?” Tracey sighed.

“I don’t know,” she told him honestly. “Hell, we were lucky we managed to find you. Faith had you wandering around her compound, blissed out on that fuckin’ drug of hers. Guess I’m one to talk, huh?” Earl chuckled, but then he winced, looking down at his chest where a large bluish-purple bruise ran down his side. He vaguely remembering being kicked in the ribs. “But there’s good news: I don’t know which one it is, but one of them has been causing the cult hell, blowing up silos, rescuing citizens. At least one of them got out alive, Sheriff. Now, I don’t know that you can find a hamburger anywhere in the county anymore, but Virgil did make some stew. And by make, I mean, ‘warmed up from a can of premade soup.’”

“It’ll do,” Earl said roughly as he felt his stomach grumble with hunger. He looked around the infirmary. “Where are we?”

“The old jail. Seemed as good a place as any to hole up. The cult’s pissed off something awful, Sheriff.”

“Yeah, really kicked a hornet’s nest,” he admitted softly, looking regretful. He shivered. “Where the hell’s my shirt?”

“Drying on a line outside. There was some blood. Don’t know whose. There was vomit too, that was yours,” she told him, lip curling as she remembered the stench.

“Ugh. Shit,” he grumbled in his gravelly voice.

“Everything alright?”

“Hmm. I was one day away from retirement,” he huffed out.

“Well. So much for that. I’ll get you some soup.”


End file.
